Unity (1918)
Te Whaea National Dance and Drama Centre, 11 Hutchison Rd, Newtown, Wellington
23/10/2008 - 01/11/2008
Production Details
In the early part of the 20th century, the Spanish Flu pandemic spread throughout the world, resulting in more deaths than World War One. As the play unfolds, terror begins to fill the small and remote rural town of Unity, Saskatchewan, Canada, and drastic measures are taken to quarantine the town in an attempt to keep the feared illness at bay. In Unity (1918) we meet nine characters caught up in the community paranoia.
Among them are Beatrice who writes a diary of the terrible times, and her sister Sissy who is fascinated with prophecies of the end of the world. And then there’s Sunna, the fifteen year old Icelandic girl who takes over as the town’s mortician after the death of her uncle.
When the disease descends upon the town, the citizens begin to turn on each other as they attempt to find a scapegoat for the crisis.
In the midst of death there is gallows humour and above all, the humanity, resilience and courage of the people of Unity.
WHEN: 7pm 23 October – 1 November 2008 (No Show 26 and 27 October)
WHERE: Te Whaea Theatre, Te Whaea: National Dance and Drama Centre, 11 Hutchison Road, Newtown, Wellington
TICKETS: $15/$10
SPECIAL: $10 PER TICKET FOR GROUP BOOKINGS OF SIX OR MORE FOR PERFORMANCES ON 23/24/25/28 OCTOBER ONLY
BOOK: (04) 381 9253 (automated line)
CAST
Maria Walker: Beatrice
Julia Croft: Sunna
Esther Green: Sissy
Kirsty Peters: Rose
Kristyl Neho: Doris
Melanie Firbank: Mary
Asher Smith: Hart
Paul Harrop: Stan, Ted
James Winter: Michael, Glen, Fred
CREW
Director: Conrad Newport
Production Co-ordinator: Derek Simpson
Set and Costume Design: Rose Kirkup
Production Manager: Lucie Camp
Assistant Production Manager: Jade Turrall
Stage Manager: Nathan McKendry
Deputy Stage Manager: Ellen Walsh
Assistant Stage Managers: Theo Nettleton, Eleanor Cooke
Sound Design: Manda Smith
Sound Asst. & Operator: Sarah Adams
Lighting Design: Ellis Thorpe
Lighting Asst. & Operator: Austin Mather
Set Construction & Props Manager: Mike Norman
Set Build & Props: Eddie Fraser Maria Deere, Kate Middleton-Olliver, Ricky Burjac
Costume Supervisor: Yvonne Autridge CAST
Maria Walker: Beatrice
Julia Croft: Sunna
Esther Green: Sissy
Kirsty Peters: Rose
Kristyl Neho: Doris
Melanie Firbank: Mary
Asher Smith: Hart
Paul Harrop: Stan, Ted
James Winter: Michael, Glen, Fred
CREW
Director: Conrad Newport
Production Co-ordinator: Derek Simpson
Set and Costume Design: Rose Kirkup
Production Manager: Lucie Camp
Assistant Production Manager: Jade Turrall
Stage Manager: Nathan McKendry
Deputy Stage Manager: Ellen Walsh
Assistant Stage Managers: Theo Nettleton, Eleanor Cooke
Sound Design: Manda Smith
Sound Asst. & Operator: Sarah Adams
Lighting Design: Ellis Thorpe
Lighting Asst. & Operator: Austin Mather
Set Construction & Props Manager: Mike Norman
Set Build & Props: Eddie Fraser Maria Deere, Kate Middleton-Olliver, Ricky Burjac
Costume Supervisor: Yvonne Autridge
Costumiers: Kylie Clow, Rosie Horsley, Ruth Swift, Kaarin Macaulay, Donna Jefferis
Assistant Costume Supervisor: Eleanor Cooke
Sound Design Mentor: Gil Eva Craig
Lighting Design Mentor: Natasha James
Voice Coach: D'Arcy Smith
2 hrs 20 mins, incl. interval
Rich harvest in dark comedy
Review by John Smythe 24th Oct 2008
Unity Saskatchewan, a prairie town about midway between Banff and Saskatoon, could be any isolated farming town anywhere, and in 1918 the isolation and insularity is extreme. A railway line, a telephone/ telegraph line and rudimentary roads are all that connect the community to an outside world dominated by the war in Europe.
In Canadian playwright Kevin Kerr’s evocation (somewhat redolent of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town in its folksy tone and the use of a narrator character), the town united against a common and distant foe while basking in the heroic glow of its ‘fallen’, soon shows its mean-spirited flipside when the Spanish Flu invades their territory. The less-than-perfect carcass of what we like to call humanity is thus laid out for our identification in darkly comic relief.
Recent pandemic scares (SARS, Bird Flu, etc), other threats to security and the politics of fear at large all resonate as timeless and universal elements in this distillation. And as part of the Toi Whakaari: NZ Drama School graduation season Unity (1918) is also an excellent choice because its twelve characters are distributed reasonably evenly between nine actors, of whom six are female (gender-balance always being an issue with drama school productions).
While Maria Walker has the largest role as Beatrice – whose diary entries provide the narrative glue – she only occasionally becomes part of the action. She knits socks and corresponds with a soldier named Glen while showing compassion to a blind returned soldier, Hart, whose estranged mortician father has died just before the play starts. A sense she is somewhat ostracised by the other women gives strength to her role as observer/ recorder and seeker of love. Walker finds and shares Bea’s inner strength to great effect.
Bea’s sister Sissy could not be more different, morbidly preoccupied as she is with the impending end of the world as prophesied in the bible (on November 28 1918) while flirting aggressively with the farmhand Michael. Her richly dramatic means of expressing her feelings are energetically realised by Esther Green.
Melanie Firbank clearly delineates the journey of Mary, from love-struck misser of her Richard at the front, through doggerel poetess at his memorial grave, to anti-contact watchdog when the Flu puts a dampener on peace celebrations. At times, however, her accent sounds more Irish than Canadian – which draws attention to how spot-on most of the other accents are.
The two telephonists, Rose and Doris, with their fingers on the very pulse of Unity and their ear to its heartbeat, are deliciously comic in the hands of Kirsty Peters and Krystal Neho respectively. Their placing, in Rose Kirkup’s otherwise expansive set design, is strangely limited and must be frustrating for some who almost always just see their backs.
As earthbound as Sissy is flighty, the late mortician’s Icelandic niece Sunna, now running the burial business single-handed, is beautifully nailed with deadpan minimalism by Julia Croft. Likewise the stolid pragmatism of farmer Stan, whose wife dies in childbirth as the play opens, is powerfully rendered by Paul Harrop, who also plays another farmer, Ted.
James Winter scores a good trifecta with "Preacher-Boy" Michael, returned soldier Glen and gruff farmer Fred. Especially compelling is Asher Smith as the blinded solder Hart. It’s a gift of a role which he accepts with alacrity.
Director Conrad Newport keeps the action flowing and focussed in Kirkup’s set, which uses timber frames to isolate spaces and people, and gives a sense of wide open expanse. A gravel pathway is used to great effect when it comes to the crunch. Manda Smith’s excellent sound design is punctuated with a recurring motif that I take to be the winnowing machine, separating the wheat from the chaff – speaking of which, there is a rich harvest to be got from this bunch of graduates.
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